It was the stuff of anti-GMO activists’ dreams: A “peer-reviewed” paper, published in a scientific-looking journal with an impressive title, detailing how a large survey of more than 3,000 people showed major health improvements among those who gave up GMO foods.
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According to the Genetic Literacy Project: “Other than his time as a professional swing dance instructor, Jeffrey Smith has been a political activist, marketing and business development director, and issues activist/author oriented around ventures linked to the multi-billion dollar Maharishi Institute religion and has no other reported science education background or other credentials.”
Smith’s “research” involved him emailing a questionnaire to 180,716 people on the mailing list of his Institute for Responsible Technology….
Using this splendidly biased sample of respondents — all of whom had presumably been regularly subjected to Smith’s own anti-GMO propaganda by virtue of being on his email list — Smith gathered results purporting to show health improvements among those who had given up GMO foods.
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“This is not how I wanted to spend my birthday,” complained Dr. Alison Van Eenennaam when I asked her to take a look at Jeffrey Smith’s paper.
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“Reading that paper was one of the most painful intellectual experiences of my life,” she said.
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